


Ever Decreasing Circles

by thedevilchicken



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - The Following Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Community: comment_fic, Dark, Drabble Sequence, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 03:44:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4419917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fusion with <i>The Following</i>: FBI Special Agent Will Graham goes to Winslow University to catch a killer whose work is based on Dante, not Poe. He meets Hannibal Lecter, professor of Italian literature, and things go a little differently. </p>
<p>(Note: you <i>do</i> need to know <i>The Following</i>, at least to the the middle of season 1!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever Decreasing Circles

**Author's Note:**

> All you need to know about Dante's Inferno here is that souls in hell are punished in different ways in different circles according to the sins they committed in life. Dante is guided through hell by the poet Virgil. 
> 
> This is a fill for comment_fic over on Livejournal. The prompt was "Hannibal, Hannibal Lecter +/ Will Graham, The Following fusion."

“I didn’t expect it to end like this,” Will says. 

“What _did_ you expect, Will?” Hannibal asks. 

“Something different. Something else.”

Will smiles tightly; Hannibal returns it, a quirk of his lips that sets Will’s teeth on edge. Knowing Hannibal he’ll smile as he dies just to spite him. 

The cell’s stark, the lone decoration a sketch, something by Doré copied from memory that Will remembers from the day they met. _Inferno_. If Hannibal’s scared, he doesn’t show it; perhaps he should be scared. If hell is what Dante said it was, the devil has a place for Hannibal Lecter. 

-

Winslow, Virginia: three dead when Will arrived. His job was always afterwards; maybe he saved lives but he only saw them ended. 

Something new there, rough-hewn sections intermingled, wires suspended from a high ceiling, a tempest, a tornado, a mobile in ever decreasing circles swinging at a push. Three girls in maybe thirty pieces each, mouths in screams; Will saw something beautiful that turned his stomach, saw why _he’d_ been sent. He could get inside the monster’s mind if he let himself. 

“It’s like something out of Dante,” said a passing professor, after vomiting. “Speak to Dr Lecter.”

He did. 

-

He expected a stodgy old professor, tweed. Dr Lecter was in tweed but neither old nor stodgy: he waved Will into his office, a chair, debonair. 

Will offered photos, expected disgust, saw intrigue instead. 

“The lustful,” Dr Lecter said. “Whipped in a tempest of insatiable desire, for eternity.” Pause. “There are pieces missing. A liver. Two kidneys.”

“You can tell?”

“I was a surgeon. Before this.”

The office was full of books, Italian, old, very orderly. Dr Lecter was at ease there. Surprisingly, so was Will. 

“Dante?” Will asked. 

“Dante,” he confirmed. “I can lend you a copy from home.”

-

“The gluttonous,” said Dr Lecter. 

A fountain full of blood, dirt, excrement, three bodies bound naked, plunged inside. The water was stopped; on arrival, the filth had been raining. 

“Third circle,” Will said; he’d read the borrowed book overnight. “Is it you?”

“Too obvious, Agent Graham.” Dr Lecter smiled. “Can I call you Will?”

“Should I call you Hannibal?”

They left the scene together, walking. 

“Can I cook for you?” Hannibal asked, unexpected.

“Are you any good?”

“I’m told so.”

Will went with him, drove, entered Hannibal’s home a second time. He was involved somehow. Will tried hard to care. 

-

Warm sake, udon, meat strips, tastes and textures Will couldn’t place. 

“This is _not_ Italian,” Will said. 

“Nor am I,” Hannibal replied. 

“You’re not on the menu.” 

Hannibal smiled, licked his teeth, odd. He put down his chopsticks, patted mouth with napkin. “If I were?” he asked, amused, intrigued.

Will chuckled. He didn’t say no; he should have. 

Alcoholic kisses turned to touches turned to more. The bedroom was dark; skin on skin, blind, Hannibal’s hands guided his, a breathless intimate anatomy class. 

In the morning, Hannibal cooked. They kissed at the stove. Will’s never asked what he feeds him. 

-

Three weeks, waking in Hannibal Lecter’s bed, ID on the nightstand with his gun. 

Hannibal lectured on medieval Florence, literature, art, Dante Alighieri, spoke excellent though accented Italian. Will watched, an acknowledged authority, compelling to hear. Students were enthralled. 

Three bodies, male, sewn posed like pushing the weights that killed them. 

“Fourth circle,” Will said. 

“Greed.”

Second, third, fourth. “What about the first?”

They found the head of the head of Philosophy on Plato’s statue in the library, rotting. How nobody had smelled it Will has never known.

“You posed them after,” Will said, certain. 

“Next time, I’ll show you.”

-

He didn’t feel the knife go in but felt the blood come out, hot, thick. 

He watched bleeding in the front row, Hannibal arranging the scene; on stage the wrathful fought amid blue silk rivers, strung like marionettes. A student of his had killed them but that didn’t absolve Hannibal’s guilt. After all, his student was the centrepiece. He’d killed the killer. 

Scene set, he hit the lights, sat, one hand pressed to Will’s chest till the ambulance came. As consciousness faded, the bodies writhed. 

Hannibal let himself be taken; Will got the credit with a hole in his heart. 

-

Hannibal’s followers were pale imitations. 

Incarcerated, he wrote a book, clinical, dark; Will saw the elaborate joke while others saw what Hannibal intended they saw. 

Will wishes he’d been surprised by the attacks, five years after Winslow. He wasn’t. He wishes he’d said no when Jack called; he’d warned them, Hannibal Lecter wasn’t his problem. Hannibal was always his problem.

Followers complete circle six, all three rings of circle seven, bloody, plans Hannibal must have drawn but lacking his execution. Will knew he wouldn’t care; making them killers was his gratification. 

Will helped him escape. Jack hadn’t planned for that. 

-

To start with, Will just watched. 

He knew watching was complicity but with their new identities, cities, complicity seemed acceptable. He learned to arrange the bodies, tableaux, Hannibal’s designs he followed instinctively and then his own. He grew. 

Three years, four; they completed circle eight’s ten _bolgie_ in year five, pitch, whips, fire, snakes, all the inferno’s tortures on display across Europe, graphic, visceral. Hannibal cooked. They ate together. 

“There are carnivores in hell,” Hannibal said at their dining table, dressed for dinner. “Cerberus, Plutus, the devil himself.” Their guests were suitably impressed. 

“You’re not the devil, Hannibal,” Will said later, guests departed, as he removed his suit, as Hannibal helped. Sometimes Hannibal dressed him like a Ken doll; Will let him, fingers grazing the scar by his heart. 

Will learned Italian, learned Hannibal. He watched him turn psychiatrist in Venice, remembers carnivals, costumes, patients’ corpses in canals. He remembers great _puttanesca_ , wine he still can’t pronounce, rented palazzi filled with fine things he was scared he’d break. A restored fresco, old books. A repaired harpsichord, Hannibal playing Bach when will wasn’t playing Zeppelin. 

“You’re not evil,” he said in bed, after the dinner. Hannibal laughed; he thinks good and evil are arbitrary values, but he’s not evil, he’s not Satan, he’s just charismatic; it’s never just the weak-willed he’s manipulated. Even the murders were never evil per se, just _ars gratia artis_. 

Then Jack Crawford came to Italy. 

“What are you planning, Will?” Hannibal asked. 

“The ending,” Will said. 

-

_Cocytus_ , ninth and final circle, traitors frozen in the lake surrounding Satan who beats his wings and freezes all, himself included, further. 

Jack died in ice with six Italian cops he’d sent, in the Florentine warehouse’s basement Will flooded, froze. In the start, Jack screamed, appealed to Will’s better nature, said he couldn’t let Hannibal win. In the end, he was quiet, still; Will thinks, in the end, Jack understood this is not Hannibal’s fault. He’s what _Jack_ made him with reckless disregard, pushing. He was always only a step away. 

Will frees Hannibal from his cell to see the traitors in ice, hands him a coat for the chill. Hannibal forgives his temporary imprisonment. He understands how Will saw the ending as they _both_ saw it, one difference between. Will just struck first. 

“You planned my death. I was your ending.”

Will doesn’t disagree; he’s right, but he would’ve been Hannibal’s, dead in a lake of ice. “Jack changed my mind.”

He’d like to think before this he was still redeemable, killing Hannibal and not these others would have set him free. But their inferno’s not punishments to fit crimes; their scenes tell stories but not the victims’, only Dante’s. 

“No more Dante, Hannibal,” Will says. 

“And what instead?”

Will slips his arms around Hannibal’s waist, under his coat, for warmth, for proximity. When they kiss, Hannibal’s mouth still tastes like the wine from what was meant as his last meal; Will’s not a great cook but now Hannibal can teach him or Will will teach him fishing or neither or both. 

Hannibal was never the beast at the heart of the inferno. He was only ever Virgil, only ever his guide, but today at last he’s Hannibal Lecter’s equal. 

“What instead?” Hannibal asks, eager, intrigued. 

“We’ll decide together.”


End file.
